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Canon A1 Sure Shot Camera in Action

August 18, 2015

Normally during the summer I tend to go out to the beach pretty often. If not the beach than at least to a swimming pool or something similar. Moving to California about this time last year I thought that I would still be going to the beach or swimming. WRONG. So the Bay Area of California is actually not generally a warm place. I live in Oakland where it is alot warmer than San Francisco but there aren’t really many beaches to visit. I can go to Ocean Beach in SF, but then I would need a wet suit to get in the water and have a jacket if I just want to walk along the beach. So…. to say the least it has not been living up to my California dreams expectations. I should have known Southern California is where it’s at 🙁 At least for my swimming and sunbathing dreams.The take away from the rant is that I have not been having great opportunities to use any of my super duper waterproof film cameras. I have reviewed both the Minolta Weathermatic-A and the Canon A1 Sure Shot camera in the past. I wanted to have more underwater shots with the Canon A1, but I never got the opportunity until recently. Well part of it was opportunity and the other part was me giving up and just taking photos in my tub. My rubber duckies came to the rescue as great tub subjects as you will see in some of the upcoming photographs. If you would like to see my original review of the camera you can find it at the below link.

I love the Canon A1 Sure Shot and the photos it takes. I think that it gives great in focus photos and for the most part the autofocus can give you great fields of depths if you frame your subject properly. I think it’s particularly good at selfies for you modern folks that are into that kinda thing. This set of pics are from a recent trip to Venice and Laguna Beach in Southern California.

My beach shots were very bright, and not overexposed. The camera was great to carry around and just have handy swinging from your neck or arm.

Now for finally some actual going into the ocean underwater shots. Some of them are a bit blurry as I didn’t have much to focus on under the water. I did have another camera though, and you may have heard of it since it is another underwater film camera. It was the Minolta Weathermatic Dual35 which is bright and yellow and maybe there will be a post about it very soon. As I mentioned in my original Canon A1 review the way that you take photos underwater with this camera is you push the knob to the macro setting and hold it in place as it will not stay automatically. The flash automatically comes on in that setting.

I think that the there is a sweet spot for taking photos underwater if you are in murky water. The subject should generally be more than 10 inches away from the camera or it might not be in focus.

The next photos were taken also submerged, but now the location has switch to the more familiar local, my tub. I took so many photos in my tub that I got wide range when my subjects were too close to be in focus.

There were some times when I forgot to use the macro underwater setting on the camera and it was just set to regular auto. In these cases the picture would come out extremely blurry not matter the distance as well as dark.

These next set photos were taken when the camera was away from the water and showing what it can achieve even if it did not have the underwater functionality.

The last photos are both panoramic as I sometimes forget that this function exists and I either never use it, or I try it out once and I forget. Then all my photos just wind up panoramic when I didn’t want them to.

Hope you enjoyed the extra underwater photos with the Canon A1 Sure Shot Camera. Next up will hopefully be the review of the Minolta Weathermatic Dual35 for a summer packed full of waterproof 35mm cameras.

2 Comments

AlonAugust 18, 2015

Hi… much enjoyed your review! planning on getting this waterproof cam (found one locally at dirt cheap price) and using it on stormy weather, rain and sea wave splashes next winter…
Do you think this canon will survive such conditions ? (hope I will ….)

I don’t think it should be a problem and it should hold up to some extreme weather conditions. I would just make sure to clean out the seals before and after every use to make sure water does not get into the camera. I have had water get into one due to sand in the seals and the camera just completely died after that 🙁